Type of Article: MacTech Blog

Apple has been granted a patent (number 8243027) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a touch screen liquid crystal display. Further refinements of the technology are certain to make its way into upcoming iOS devices.

The patent is for liquid-crystal display (LCD) touch screens that integrate the touch sensing elements with the display circuitry. The integration may take a variety of forms. Touch sensing elements can be completely implemented within the LCD stackup but outside the not between the color filter plate and the array plate.

There’s no end in sight to the iPad’s dominance, it seems. The tablet market will not plateau any time soon, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics (http://www.strategyanalytics.com). The installed base of tablet computers will continue to grow at a strong pace for the coming years, surpassing 780 million in 2016, predicts the research group.

Disney’s Apple and Disney are good buddies, so it will interesting to see if the former adopts, helps with or has any interaction with Disney’s new Touché technology.

An Apple patent (number 20120200498) for a motion tracking user interface shows that the company is at least considering such technology for Macs and perhaps the rumored “iTV.”

The patent involves a method to transition focus of a display corresponding to an object’s motion tracked by a video camera or like device is disclosed. In one implementation, the display shows one or more windows or user interfaces on the display. The object’s motion can be used to select one of the windows or user interfaces on the display and manipulate content presented in the window or user interface.